Kalandrakas, what is?

Posted in Photography on April 7th, 2009 by jesslee

April 5, 2006 — the day Kalandrakas was born!

But, what is Kalandrakas?

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It was two months after since I started working in Japan that I got my first digital camera, a Sony DSC-R1.  I was taking pictures of almost everything: from plants to animals,  macros to landscapes, festivals to cosplays.

Minato-mirai in Yokohama

When I signed up on Flickr, I had a hard time choosing a screen name since I didn’t want to use my real name. During that time, I was still involved in the company’s bi-annual newsletter named Kalandrakas.

The word kalandrakas means variety or miscellaneous in Cebuano or Bisaya, my local dialect in the Philippines.

Because my photos were so random, I was thinking it would be nice to use this word as my screen name. So there, the Kalandrakas photography was born.

spider

During the first year, I’d been trying to shoot a variety of subjects. There were times that I wanted to focus on one subject, but after some time, I changed to another.

After a year, I got a new camera, a Nikon D80. I then started going out to public places to shoot.  The place that I often used to visit before was Harajuku. It was actually in this place I started to love street photography.

street

In streets, everything is quick and random.  Sometimes it’s frustrating, but once you capture raw and candid moments, it just  feels great.

Right now, I have a Nikon D700,  that works very well with low-light — perfect for street photography during the night.

I might stick to street photography for a while, ‘coz in the streets, the world is so kalandrakas.

Happy 3 years to me as a photographer!

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Achievements of Kalandrakas:

2006
Dec. 9 -  JapanToday: Picture of the day
Dec. 22 – Metropolis issue 665: Photo of the week
Dec. 30 – first studio shoot (s0lo)

2007
Apr. 18 – JapanToday: Picture of the Day
Apr. 19 – created the FTPS group (with Naoto)
June 9 – JapanToday: Picture of the Day
June 29 – Metropolis issue 692: Photo of the week
July 6 – Metropolis issue 693: Photo of the week
July 22 – JapanToday: Picture of the Day

2008
Apr. 21 – Kabayan: Fil-Am Fotogs Photographer of the Week
June 23 – Kabayan: Fil-Am Fotogs Photographer of the Week

2009
Mar. 13 – Harajuku photos featured on Gym Class  magazine
Mar. 25-29 – Bayanihan: A Photo Exhibit

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